You may not believe this, but sometimes I just run out of ideas for this blog. So I went to my team for inspiration and they came up with a good one: different modes of transportation!

Over the 40 years we’ve been arranging group travel, we have incorporated a LOT of different modes of transport – far beyond the obvious planes, trains, and automobiles. One of the best things about traveling internationally is seeing (and experiencing) some of the unique local modes of getting from Point A to Point B.

I’ll start with boats:

GONDOLA TRIVIA:

• The earliest recorded use of a gondola dates back to the year 1094.
• At the end of the 16th century there were an estimated 10,000 gondolas plying the canals – today there are only about 425.
• It takes over 400 hours of training and apprenticeship to master the rowing, turning, slowing down, backstroke, and necessary stopping maneuvers – a noble profession passed down through the generations. Only 3 to 4 new gondolier licenses are granted annually. Singing is optional.
• Each gondola is 35′ 6″ long and 4′ 6″ wide, but the left side is 10 inches longer than the other, helping to counterbalance the weight of the gondolier as well as compensate for the tendency of the boat to sway left as the gondolier rows on the right.
• Each gondola takes 500 hours to make and only about 20 are built each year.
• All gondolas are painted black – at least 6 glossy coats’ worth. It’s the law!

No wonder those gondola rides are so expensive!

 

And then there are the animals:

Local modes of transport:

Trains:

Film and photo processing was expensive back in 1979 when I was bumming around India with a backpack, so I don’t have any photographs of my experiences riding on (cheap) 3rd class Indian trains. But I have some great memories:

• One of my most vivid memories was riding for a few hours in the luggage rack of an overcrowded train.
• I shoveled coal into the boiler of a steam locomotive.
• I saved a few rupees by traveling from Point A to Point B on overnight trains where I slept on a hard wooden seat in 3rd class.

Not sure I could do that again – but it sure was an adventure back then!

Buses and other wheeled vehicles:

This is Ellen’s incredible rental car story:

“There were five us – two Canadian girls, two Australian girls, and me – all packed into a Morris Mini – with our luggage, no less! We traveled all around northern UK and up to Scotland. The car kept giving us trouble with a sticking throttle. It would intermittently stick in the “full throttle position,” then have no throttle at all… pedal to the floor – nothing, nada! 

It finally quit on us for good just outside of Heathrow Airport. In my infinite 21-year-old girl wisdom, I opened the hood and started poking around. I found a loose cable which I assumed was a broken throttle cable. Thinking that I could fix it by shoving it where I thought it belonged, it started sparking and caught the cable casing on fire. It traveled up the cable into the felt carpet of the car. 

We had no fire extinguisher or anything to put the flames out and within about 10 minutes our car was a complete fireball on the side of the road. Apparently, we held up traffic to the airport for miles – I guess we even made the news! I shudder to think of all the people who missed flights because of our “Flaming Mini!”

As I always do, I asked my husband, Scott, to proof this before publication. His first comment, “Where are the airplanes?” (He’s a pilot …) So I guess you’ll be seeing, “Transportation, Part 2” – coming soon!

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What about you? What’s your favorite transportation story?  (And I’ll take blog suggestions, too!)